


minding your manners

by TheBlackestFrost



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Brawls, Content warning: implied homophobia, Drinking, F/M, Hints of madwife if you squint (I always squint), Sweeney is not pleased with how Salim gets spoken to, gaurdian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-30 15:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21430846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlackestFrost/pseuds/TheBlackestFrost
Summary: In hindsight, it really was the Dead Wife's fault.Or the Omani guy's fault.Either way he's sure wasn't his fault.Well, fairly sure.Or, Sweeney wakes up in the drunk tank.
Relationships: Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53





	minding your manners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Waifine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waifine/gifts).

> Based on a Cab Trio prompt from Waifine, who requested a drunken Sweeney coming to Salim's defence.

In hindsight, it really was the Dead Wife's fault.

Or the Omani guy's fault.

Either way he's sure wasn't his fault.

Well, fairly sure.

Regardless of precisely _who_, the pounding in his head suggests that _someone_ is definitely at fault and should probably give him significant compensation for the incredible wrongs being done to him by his liver at the moment.

He opens his eyes very, very slowly, letting his surroundings announce themselves rather than seeking them out proactively.

He's inside, he can tell that much, and he feels a mild relief that he hasn't passed out under another bridge, or in a sewerage drain, or on the front steps of a brothel (having spent his coin and himself and having been told very politely that he was welcome to come back but he really did need to leave for now so that everyone could get some electrolytes) or that one time his drunk self had thought a Mack truck looked particularly cozy and he nearly lost his arm.

His surroundings continue to trickle into his awareness.

It's not the worst place he's ever woken up, hell it even looks a little bit familiar, and his stomach does the most incredible rollercoaster-esque lurching as he goes from mildly relieved to utterly frustrated in seconds.

A police cell.

He groans.

The drunk tank.

Again.

He sits up carefully and sees two other men on the far side of the cell eyeing him nervously. He nods, the movement sending part of his brain sloshing forward, and he closes his eyes tightly to stop it from slipping out the sockets. 

"Fellas."

They don't respond and he has a brief memory of being brought in less than quietly, leaving him suspecting that perhaps their caution is warranted.

He does the usual checks of himself, moving slowly and carefully.

Knuckles bruised and skin split.

He works his jaw, feeling some tenderness on one side, but otherwise no breaks.

He runs his hands over his face, wincing when he hits a cut over his eyebrow.

He stands, stretching his arms over his head and cataloguing where the aches, pains, and more worrisome bruising may be. He's got the dull ache of a taser burn on one hip, and a quick check of his ribs shows some fading bruises that he suspects are from a police baton.

Nothing broken, however, and he feels mildly smug.

Not a bad night.

He reaches into his pocket, calling his flask from the hoard and taking a swig before sending it back.

Now to begin the awkward business of trying to unravel his night and work out just how much shit he can expect from the pigs. Admittedly his memory isn't exactly reliable (and if he thinks on anything further back than a few weeks it'll start to bleed into that hazy territory that doubt and madness feed on), but last night's drinking rarely escapes him for too long.

He starts from what he can remember, closing his eyes and picking up the trail of a thought.

It had all started in a bar.

Obviously.

***

The bar had been decent, a nice dive with music slightly too loud and drinks reasonably priced. They’d tucked away at a booth, drinks for him, a meal for the Jinn-chaser, and cigarettes for the queen of the undead in the corner.

He remembers a crowd entering, several men already partway inebriated. The place had been busy, heaving, good trade but a rowdy crowd. 

He remembers drinking faster than usual, remembers sparring with the corpse and feeling stung by something she’d said at one point or another.

He remembers more whisky. 

There had been a woman at the bar sending him smiles, and he remembers catching the Dead Wife’s eyes rolling. Salim had left for the bathroom as they began to dig into one another in earnest.

“Please, I don’t need a sense of smell to know you’re about 5 showers behind for any woman to touch you.”

He’d grinned at that, he remembered, the whisky piling up quickly and his tongue loosening too fast.

“Seems you’re underestimating my charms.”

"Is that a leprechaun thing, that over confidence?" 

He'd barked out a laugh, leaning back and running his tongue over his teeth. He'd looked back over at the woman by the bar and, in splendid timing, caught her staring. 

He'd shot her a grin, raised an eyebrow and his glass, and enjoyed her blush as she'd done the same. 

"You were saying, love?" 

His table mate rolled her eyes back so far he'd genuinely worried one would stay there. 

He remembers feeling warm and then a little wild, remembers wanting to bait her a little harder to see what sort of a rise he can get out of her. They were making good time, the night was cool and the bar warm. The whisky was helping to calm the twisting worm of guilt in his gut he felt when he looked at her, and he’d been keen to chase that feeling.

If he played his cards right, he thought, she might even laugh.

He watched the crowd of rowdy men near the bar and something caught his eye, but then he was back in the bottle and not really thinking on what he saw.

Salim was quiet when he returned from the bathroom. 

He remembers that.

Remembers the song playing, some 80s retro junk about comin' a little bit closer, you're my kinda man, so big and so strong.

He’d been gearing himself up for a particularly obnoxious jab about blow jobs and the overconfidence of road head but had stopped when he realised Laura wasn’t looking at him at all, but at their companion. Salim's shoulders were slumped inwards, as if trying to shrink away from something, and that ugly sweater he insisted on wearing looked like camouflage against his pallid expression.

She had tilted her head at Salim when he sat, pulling himself protectively into the booth.

"You OK?"

He gave her a half-hearted nod. "Yes, just...people can sometimes be...rude."

Sweeney lights another cigarette. "What, he ask to take a ride in your side car or something?" 

Salim wouldn't meet his eyes. 

_Sweeney's memory throws up an image, Salim moving past a group of men, their expressions gleeful and vicious, one moving too close to spit out an epithet, inaudible but clearly received as Salim's face dropped, fearful and sad._

_He didn’t like fearful and sad. _

He remembers keeping his voice even but feeling something heat his chest beyond the burn of the whisky, something old that he hadn’t felt in a while.

"What’d he say?"

Salim shook his head but Sweeney's eyes had narrowed; he could smell blood in the water and it made him lick his lips. His voice was a low growl and he saw the Dead Wife shoot him a look but he was too focused to care.

"What'd he fucking say to you?"

Salim looked to Laura but found no respite there, her skinny arms crossed over her chest and face impassive, waiting.

The shorter man swallowed and told them.

Sweeney is no hypocrite. Sex is a necessity, people too hung up on the whos and whys, and those things combined make for good opportunities to rile people. So whether mocking a corpse for road head, or a little man with sweet eyes for falling head over ass for a Jinn, he's pretty happy being a dickhead. People are more honest like that, either in their angry reactions or their expressions. 

Uncomfortable, offside, pissed off is good.

Fearful and sad, not so much. 

When Salim stopped speaking Sweeney finished his drink. He watched the group for a moment, their hyena laughter and predatory smiles telling him everything about their plans for the evening. 

They were heading past the booth and Sweeney kept his eyes on Salim as he shifted his boot out.

It all happened very quickly. 

The man had tripped and Sweeney had caught him by the back of the shirt before his face hit the ground.

“Hey what the fuc-“

Sweeney had hauled him upright like a child whose father was ready to bend him over the knee, and the man’s wide eyed indignation would probably have been funny, but Sweeney hadn’t looked away from Salim’s face.

“This the one?”

Salim’s expression of awkward shock was enough of a confirmation and Sweeney took a drag of a cigarette. He took his time before stubbing it out.

The man’s friends were starting to get antsy and confident, and there was a hum of violence in the air as the man he held began to shift from afraid to pissed off relatively quickly.

“Man, I don’t know what the fuck your friend here is bitching about but tell that little fa-“

He stopped talking.

In his defence, it is terribly difficult to keep talking when someone throws you into a bar.

Sweeney stood slowly, drawing up to his full height, and let himself really relish the delightful way the colour drained from their faces.

“Now, whose next?”

Things got messy…fast.

He’d ducked a blow from one of the man’s companions and found himself tackled around the middle by someone a head shorter than him and half as broad.

It was chaotic, confused, and a little shambolic, elbows thrown and punches barely connecting and people entering and leaving the fray with little regard for logic. It wasn’t exactly a challenge but the combination of tight spaces, shifting crowd, and his generally shitty luck meant it wasn’t a cake walk either.

He’d been searching for the man he’d started with, blocking and twisting and having the occasional punch connect with a dull thud that let him grinning when suddenly he’d felt like his back was on fire.

The man he’d first accosted swung a chair over his shoulders and he grunted before turning, grabbing his assailant by the back of the neck and throwing him into the wall repeatedly.

“That.” whump “Is not.” whump “Fucking.” whump “Polite.”

He remembers seeing the Dead Wife in his periphery, staying close to the table and swinging occasionally, carefully controlling her hits so she didn't run her entire hand through someone’s chest. Salim was watching, wide eyed and frozen from the booth, and the way she seems to stay slightly in front of the little man means she looks like an extremely over-zealous bouncer.

The effect was disturbing, little thing pulling her punches while flinging grown men around like they’re made of paper, and he gave himself a minute to chuckle before he hauled his cargo back to their booth.

The man in his grip whimpered pathetically as Sweeney chatted away, swiping a bottle from the bar with his free hand and listing slightly as he took a long draught and addressed his new friend. The room had begun to shift slightly as his previous drinking caught up with him. 

“Now…now." He gestured in the vague direction of the table as the room began to swim. "You see Salim here, that’s the one you were *hiccup* so fucking rude to…he’s looking for someone special.”

He paused to watch the Dead Wife push a man into his friends, knocking them down like bowling pins as Salim watched, horrified and a little…relieved?

"Isn't she lovely?"

The man didn't respond, whimpering a bit as Sweeney had listed to one side, and that had just seemed rude.

Sweeney pulled his victim's arm higher as he’d finished the last of the bottle, looking at it with satisfaction before flinging it behind him to where the corpse had plucked it from the air to introduce to one of her dance partner’s faces.

“Thass…that’s him there. He met someone, see *hiccup*, did the horizontal hula and saw the bearded fucking light ifyaknowwhatimean *hiccup*. So…so he’s searching his way across this great bloody fuckin’ *belch* mess of a country, driven by love and faith and purpose *hiccup*.”

He continued pulling the man towards the table, his feet barely touching the floor as his arm was wrenched upward, and Sweeney’s tone stayed affable, conversational even as he leant down to the man’s ear.

“Tell me, fuck face, what are you doing with your life that’s so *hiccup* fucking special?”

He lit a cigarette, took a drag and enjoyed the burning as his lungs struggled to keep up, exhaling and dropping the man to his knees in front of Salim.

The little man was looking up at Sweeney with something between horror and awe and he was just drunk enough to not mind the combo.

He held the man upright by his head, fingers tangling roughly in greasy hair.

"Now, what do we say?"

There is a sickening pause and he heard sirens in the distance.

He twisted the hair between his fingers, hard, and yanked the man's head back. 

“Now, petal, we don’t have much more time here and I know you want to settle this so…”

He placed a boot over one of the hands the man had on the floor, letting his weight ease over it, reminding him of a motel room some time ago when someone much shorter had done the same to him. 

It worked as well now as it had then. 

"Please, PLEASE, I'm sorry I'm so sorry I should not have said that I will do better I am so so sorry just please help me please just fuckin-"

Laura's boot knocked the man out which halted the ugly switch from apology to begging and Sweeney remembers feeling a kind of grim approval as the alcohol and violence made the room spin.

He wasn’t surprised by the sirens, and there was no opportunity to push past the crowds.

He had been surrounded quickly, standing out too easily, a head taller than the rest of the room and the barman quickly pointing him out as the troublemaker.

Laura had stepped forward to join the fray and he’d shook his head at her, well aware that while a big man having a temper tantrum would be excused, a skinny little corpse girl with flies around her and strength enough to flip a police car might be harder to explain.

He saw her purse her lips before pulling back, standing in front of Salim and watching the officers manhandle him.

He had let them force him to his knees, the room spinning wildly now, and his last memory was of the sticky bar floor against his cheek, and large black eyes watching him with concern.

***

"Hey, you, the big one."

Sweeney rolls his eyes but turns to the cop coming over to open to door.

"Realised I'm too sexy to keep locked up?"

The man's sense of humour is non-existent. "Nope, but you've got some angels on your side."

Out in the lobby the angel in question is leaning against the desk railing on the officer in charge, who was clearly overwhelmed by her less than angelic scent. "And another thing, next time make sure you're actually picking up the bad guys!"

"Ma'am, he threw a table through the window."

Sweeney grins; he'd forgotten about that. 

"Ok, sure, maybe, but seriously you should have heard what this guy-"

"Wait, the notes say he had some accomplices. You’re saying you were-"

She shifts so she’s blocking Salim from view entirely and gestures to herself dramatically.

"Whoa, come on, do I look like I can start a riot?"

Salim is sitting in one of the chairs looking worriedly on as she continues to harangue the officer, and he jumps when Sweeney lands heavily in the seat beside him.

They're both quiet for a minute which is good considering his head is trying to shrink and explode all at once.

Salim’s eyes flick to him and his usually quiet voice is nearly a whisper. "Back home, I couldn't...they didn't...nobody has…"

"Don't start, little man." He keeps his eyes straight ahead. "Just an opportunity to blow off some steam is all."

Salim looks at him with those worried eyes, searching for something, and he clearly finds it because his face breaks into a smile, genuine and sincere and all those things that Sweeney isn't used to seeing sent in his direction.

He's not actually sure the last time someone gazed at him with an expression of such kindness and he briefly considers hitting the little man so he'll stop. Instead he lets it wash over him, basks in it, and finds himself unable to turn away from the unabashed gratitude.

It feels like something precious, something worth guarding over.

When he looks back to the desk Laura is watching them, expression unreadable, but if he was less hungover he'd think she might have had the ghost of a smile on her lips.

He stands as she casts milky eyes over him before nodding at him impatiently.

"Can we go now, Ginger Minge?"

As they head out into the sunlight he feels her hand on his arm for a brief moment, looking down at it and then at her, trying to read her in the blistering light of early morning. What passes between them is brief and deniable, but if he squinted and really looked at it (upside down or through a telescope) it could have been a fierce, quiet approval.

He doesn’t need approval.

There are memories in there, twisting away, that tell him this isn’t out of character for him. This is his lot; blowing both ways means watching out, at least sometimes.

The look is gone and she's striding away but his arm still burns and he gives himself a minute. 

He doesn’t need the approval but he won't deny enjoying it, letting it settle against his skin while watching her climb into the cab and slam the door. 

He realises Salim is staring at him with that same soft smile and the barest hint of amusement, and he rolls his eyes and lurches forward. 

"Oh fuck off..."

He folds himself awkwardly into the back seat, pulling his hat over his face so he can avoid the looks they keep shooting him, and falls back to sleep with a smile. 


End file.
